Your recent experiences with the light crust coloration from using the All Trumps flour prompted me to research the All Trumps and KASL flours to see if I could find an explanation for the difference, particularly when the two dough formulations were otherwise the same. I looked at the specs at the General Mills and King Arthur websites and discovered that the two flours are very close in almost all respects except that the KASL seems to have less barley malt and it has a higher falling number (FN) than the All Trumps. The FN is an indication of the amylase enzyme performance of a given flour by which natural sugars are extracted from the damaged starch in the flour by enzyme activity. The FN number is low when there is a significant amount of amylase enzyme performance and high when there is a low level of amylase enzyme performance. The FN for the KASL is 250 +/- 30 sec., and for the All Trumps it is 200-240.

Before assessing the significance of the different falling numbers of the two flours, it may be helpful to consider what factors govern crust coloration. The two main sources of crust color are caramelization of residual sugars in the dough at the time of baking, and the Maillard reactions. Residual sugar is that sugar that is in the dough and at the surface of the unbaked crust at the time of baking. It is sugar that the yeast has not consumed. As with any sugar, as the temperature of the pizza rises during baking, the surface sugars caramelize. They get darker with time, just as melting common table sugar in a bit of water on the stove becomes darker the longer it is cooked. The Maillard reactions are reactions that take place between reducing sugars (also residual), protein (amino acids) and moisture. The more sugar there is, or the more protein there is, the greater the degree of crust coloration, and it will intensify with increasing crust temperature. If the All Trumps finished crust has a light color, to me this suggests that there may be insufficient residual sugars in the dough at the time of baking. Since the two flours have very close protein contents, the Maillard reactions are most likely quite similar and not per se responsible for the lighter crust color.

If the above analysis is correct, then it is quite possible that the All Trumps flour is subject to a shorter fermentation window than the King Arthur flour. The lower FN for the All Trumps flour seems consistent with this assessment and suggests that a shorter fermentation time should be used for the All Trumps than the KASL. To compensate, it may be possible to add some diastatic malt to the All Trumps to increase the amylase enzyme performance and thereby help extract more sugars from the damaged starch in the All Trumps flour so that more of it is present in the dough at the time of baking to contribute to crust coloration. It may also be possible to add ordinary sugar or possibly barley malt syrup (nondiastatic) to the dough to accomplish much the same result, although one has to be careful not to use too much because of the potential of the bottom crust prematurely browning when the pizza is baked on a hot stone. If diastatic malt is use, the recommended rate is about 0.5-1.0% of the weight of formula flour. Above that, there is the potential of the dough becoming gummy and the finished crust may have a reddish color. A common brand of diastatic malt is Bob's Red Mill.

As always, thanks for the thoughtful and well researched comments Pete. I don't really recall if the pizza I made with only 20 hours or so of retardation was dramatically different or darker in coloring that the one with 65 hours. I think it may have been a little darker, but it was also cooked on tiles rather than a screen. I didn't take any pictures. Next time I try to pay attention to see if a shorter fermentation makes a difference in coloring. Unfortunately, it won't be until next week at the earliest since I have to go out of town tomorrow.

Also, I may try some malt, the grocery store I frequent has a bunch of Bob's Red Mill products.

The photos below show the results of my latest experiment with the Lehmann NY dough formulation, in this case for a 12” pizza. The significance of my latest effort is that I used a markedly different method for preparing the dough in my basic KitchenAid stand mixer, one that yielded a dough that I was able to cold ferment for almost six days—and I believe it could have gone even longer—without signs of overfermentation. The finished dough started out round in its container (a metal lidded container), started to flatten out after about a day or two in the refrigerator, and remained in that condition for the rest of the time until I removed it from the refrigerator to warm up at room temperature on the bench for about two hours before shaping and stretching. The dough had a grayish tint to it but had no pronounced odors of fermentation (alcohol, etc.) or wetness. It’s possible that the odors escaped when I periodically opened the container to examine the dough, expecting each time to see the dough start a downhill slide--one that never transpired.

I thought for sure that the dough would be unworkable after almost six days. It didn’t rise much on the bench, but it handled quite normally. When stretching it, it had a nice balance between elasticity and extensibility and had “anti-rip” qualities that approximated those that I have only achieved before using a natural preferment. I am now in the process of trying to replicate the results so it would be premature to comment further on the new method I used. Maybe it was a fluke. Everything I did had a reason and a purpose, or so I felt, so I am hoping it was not a fluke. Over the course of the next week I hope to have an answer.

The finished pizza itself, a simple pepperoni pizza using an uncooked 6-in-1 sauce and the Dragone (Saputo) brand of low-moisture whole-milk mozzarella cheese, was first rate. The crust had an outstanding flavor, one that came very close to what I have only achieved before when using natural preferments. What surprised me most was how sweet the crust was, especially at the rim, given that I did not add any sugar to the dough. There apparently was also enough residual sugar in the dough to contribute to good crust coloration. The pizza itself was baked on a pizza stone that had been preheated for about an hour at around 500-550 degrees F. After six minutes on the stone, I removed the pizza from the stone and placed it on the topmost oven rack position for about another minute. I did not use the broiler, as I often do to get increased coloration. The crust was chewy and a bit crispy at the rim and I also saw a lot of tiny bubbles at the rim, which is something I like in my NY style pizzas. The crumb was also quite decent and the rim in terms of size and shape was in line with a typical NY style pizza as I had occasion to observe many times during my last visit to NYC.

In the immediately preceding post I mentioned that I had used a new method for making the basic Lehmann dough in my basic KitchenAid mixer, with good dough handling qualities and long fermentation characteristics and accompanying pronounced crust flavor.

Since the last post, I have replicated the method several times, with equally good, reproducible results. In essence, what I did was to tear down the basic Lehmann dough processing steps, modify and augment them, and rearrange them in a new order. Because of the general nature of the new method (i.e., it is not limited to the Lehmann formulation), I started a new thread to describe the details of the new method. It is at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3985.msg33251.html#msg33251. I have also posted below a couple of photos of pizzas that were based on doughs using the new method. The pizza shown in the first photo is one that was based on a dough in which the yeast, IDY, was introduced early in the dough making process. The age of the dough at the time I used it was between 5 and 6 days. The pizza shown in the second photo is one that was based on a dough in which the yeast, again IDY, was introduced toward the end of the dough making process. The age of that dough when I used it was about 7 days. The starting dough formulation in both cases was the basic Lehmann dough formulation (for 12" pizzas).

Thanks, Pete-zza! I gave the 14-inch formula in reply #186 and instructions in reply #190 a try today on my Big Gree Egg. The crust turned out really well! I made the dough last night and wanted them for lunch, so I let the dough rise on the counter for ~8 hours instead. Next time I will do the slow fridge rise as stated. Couldn't find KASL, so used KA's Bread Flour + VWG instead. One had half pepperoni and half pulled pork, and the other had sausage/onion/clam. Cooked at 450+ for 12 minutes each. Here are some pictures:

I continued with the GM AT flour and produced 2 16" doughs...non-parbaked. I put 2% salt because I wanted to tighten up the dough as it was retarded for almost 3days at 63% hydration and my previous experience told me the dough was rather slack... I also was curious to see how salty 2% was.... it's no problem.I also don't believe most NYC places employ 63% hydration... my dough steamed and felt supple on the insides of the edge crust...

I thought this time, perhaps thanks to the salt, the dough was a bit tougher and held its shape a bit better, perhaps 10-15% better... next time maybe I'll cut hydration to 60-61 pct, keep salt at 2%, and see if the voids have any negative affect from the 2-3pct less hydration.

I bought a heavy duty pizza stone at a rest. supply store and it has made a world of difference but,I too have been having the most success using All Trumps at 60-61% with a fair amount of salt, no sugar or oil - very little ADY and a 12-15 min hand kneading period following 5 min kneading - 1 min rest. I do 4) 12-14" balls at a time and knead the whole thing in a line. I watched this technique video of some guy in Naples doing it and it works brilliant.

Dough sits in fridge for 3-6 days. I let it warm for 2+ hours before dusting with flour and stretching. Which it does easliy while still holding its shape. (62-64% were way too extensible) It bakes up beautifully on my stone at 550 in about 6 minutes and has a wonderful brown color, real PIZZA taste, a crisp crackle on the outer most portion and a tender puffy inside that just about melts when its shaped perfectly proportional.

If the above analysis is correct, then it is quite possible that the All Trumps flour is subject to a shorter fermentation window than the King Arthur flour. The lower FN for the All Trumps flour seems consistent with this assessment and suggests that a shorter fermentation time should be used for the All Trumps than the KASL. To compensate, it may be possible to add some diastatic malt to the All Trumps to increase the amylase enzyme performance and thereby help extract more sugars from the damaged starch in the All Trumps flour so that more of it is present in the dough at the time of baking to contribute to crust coloration. It may also be possible to add ordinary sugar or possibly barley malt syrup (nondiastatic) to the dough to accomplish much the same result, although one has to be careful not to use too much because of the potential of the bottom crust prematurely browning when the pizza is baked on a hot stone. If diastatic malt is use, the recommended rate is about 0.5-1.0% of the weight of formula flour. Above that, there is the potential of the dough becoming gummy and the finished crust may have a reddish color. A common brand of diastatic malt is Bob's Red Mill.

Peter

Pete... i started to wonder, even with the thought of a shorter fermentation be used for AT... we are talking 3-4 days instead of 4-5? would it even make a difference, because i'd imagine most people use the dough bet. 2-3 days.

meanwhile, I just mixed 50/50 ratio of KASL and AT flour for 4 16" doughs. I've been building up to this big test... I'm going to see how this hybrid dough pans out.

Since All Trumps is a professional's flour, I'd venture to say that most pizza operators don't ferment their doughs for more than a day, even for a cold ferment (and most likely a lot less than a day if room temperature fermentation is used). The issue of coloration I mentioned may not show up until a few days longer. If you would like to try using some diastatic malt with your All Trumps, I'd be happy to put some in an envelope and send it to you (at no cost). I don't have any All Trumps but I have quite a bit of diastatic malt, from Bob's Red Mill. I think it would be an interesting experiment, so if you want to send me a PM with an address, I will send some diastatic malt out to you.

Sorry if this has come up, I recently started reading this thread for the first time. I have a question for Pete-zza (or anyone else that might be able to answer the question). I noticed at some point someone mentioned loosely covering the tin (or Tupperware) for the first hour when it is put into the fridge to allow the dough to dry a bit and not develop moisture. As some point along the way (at least as far as I have read), it looks like Pete-zza stopped doing this and now covers it as soon as it goes into the fridge. I was wondering what the reasoning was for not doing this anymore or if you still do it and just don’t mention it.

You are very observant. I completely forgot about that technique. I believe I first noted the technique for use in a home refrigerator setting from member giotto. I don't recall offhand whether he was trying to emulate the practice recommended by Tom Lehmann or other professionals, but Tom routinely recommends that the trays of dough balls be cross stacked in the cooler for about 1 1/2-2 hours and then be downstacked for the rest of their stay in the cooler. The reason for the cross stacking is to allow heat to escape, so that the dough balls don't dry out, and to prevent moisture from condensing and wetting the dough balls. He says that failure to down stack can sometimes even lead to the dough balls "blowing" while in the cooler.

In my case, with only a single dough ball or two, and using separate containers, I concluded that the cross stacking was unlikely to have a material effect. Hence, I stopped using it. However, one thing I have been doing instead is to place a sheet of paper towel between the lid for my container (metal or plastic) and the rest of the container. The paper towel will become slightly moist and it will also keep moisture that condenses on the inside of the lid of the container from getting to the dough ball in the container. I haven't done any specific testing to see if this is really necessary, hence I have not discussed it much on the forum before, and even then only casually. The paper towel does however do the job of picking up some of the moisture and keeping the dough ball dry.

"Blowing" is what can happen to a dough if it overproofs (rises too quickly) while in the refrigerator or cooler. Usually, it is a temperature-related problem, sometimes accompanied by using too much yeast. It's less of a problem in a home setting where you are only trying to cool down a few dough balls but it can be a big problem when you are trying to cool down several boxes of dough balls. That's a big reason why Tom Lehmann advocates that operators try to keep their finished dough temperatures at around 80 degrees F and get the dough balls into the cooler as quickly as possible, before they have a chance to get "gassy".

As regular readers of this thread may be aware, I have been experimenting with a new dough making method using my standard C-hook KitchenAid mixer. Because of my intimate familiarity with the basic Lehmann NY style dough formulation, I have used that formulation as a guinea pig for the new method. The new dough making method, which is described at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3985.msg33251.html#msg33251, was used recently to make doughs that had useful lives of up to 7 days. More recently, I extended that to a bit over 10 days (10 days and 4 1/2 hours, to be more exact). For those who are interested in these sorts of things, the details of my latest experiment, including the Lehmann dough formulation I used for test purposes, are presented at Reply 23 at http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,3985.msg35370.html#msg35370. A typical photo of the finished pizza is shown below.

I have been a long time lurker here. I am finely going to stop lurking and make some pizza.This is a Great board with almost an endless amount of information and outstanding support by it members. I hopefully will be able to add my two cents in someday.

I will be trying my first attempt at making pizza dough on Sunday. I will be using Tom’s recipe for a 12” pie and I have a few questions;

The only flour I could come up with so far was KA All Purpose. I will be cooking this directly on a stone, and can use ether a KA Mixer or a Food Processor.Do I need to change anything in the formula for this type of flour? I am think maybe less water due to the lower gluten? What about the fermentation time 24 or 48 or more hrs? Anything you can add will be greatly appreciated.

I think I would be inclined to reduce the hydration (the amount of water in relation to the flour) to 60%. Also, if it is cold where you live, I think I would increase the amount of instant dry yeast (IDY) a bit, to around 0.40%. I ran these changes through the Lehmann dough calculating tool at http://www.pizzamaking.com/dough_calculator.html and got the following results:

I think 24-48 hours of cold fermentation should work out well for you.

At some point, you may want to investigate the possibility of getting some bread flour. King Arthur makes a very good brand that is found in many supermarkets and food stores. It also works well for a Lehmann style dough and will usually tolerate high hydration levels.

Hi Troy T, Pete-zza is correct about trying to get you're hands on at least some KA Bread flour or high gluten. This is important from a standpoint of texture/chew in the crust consistent with a N.Y. street pizza. Also the fact that the N.Y. Lehmann formulas call for the use of a stronger flour. Even if you do not have access to High gluten a Pillsbury bread flour would be better to use for a higher protien content than the KA all purpose. I think you can find Pillsbury Bread flour almost anywhere. Chiguy

On several occassions, I've left my dough in the refrigerator for at least a week. This was normally an accident though. With an exception to some loss of color, the pizza came out fine. But I don't believe the taste matched the degree of taste that I receive here in the San Francisco area with starters that I've produced or with sour dough breads that I've eaten. And rather than wait for that long for my pizza dough, I think I'd rather just work with a starter when I wish for that type of taste.

I believe that a few things have contributed to my ability to delay the dough fermentation.

- I use Active Dry Yeast rather than Instant, because I am not looking for instant results. Although these yeasts are becoming closer in nature, I have found them still to be different.

- I no longer proof my yeast, since I'm looking to delay the yeast activity and I don't store my yeast that long.

- I always work with cool water, and I intermix my time between hand mixing and Kitchen Aid kneading.

- I still prefer a resting period. But I first add the full amount of water along with all ingredients (except yeast), then an amount of flour equivalent in weight to the full amount of water. At times, I then add the yeast on top of the flour. On other occassions, I prefer to wait until the second batch of flour is added. I use a strong spatula to bring it together at this stage, which is easy because it's like a batter.

- After a resting period, I add the final amount of flour and then the yeast (if I have not added it already). I then do an initial mix by spatula and bring it together with my Kitchenaid mixer on the usual number 1. This takes less than a minute.

- I remove the dough from the hook (since it's always climbing). Then I continue on #1 for 2 minutes. By now, it's pretty smooth. I hand knead to get a feel for the dough (stickiness, etc.) for maybe a minute. Then I finish it off for another minute or two. I see no need for lengthy processing times, since I am only working with 3 or so doughs at a time, and I prefer an airy texture.

- If I'm going to use the dough in the next 2 days or so, I just split it up immediately and bag it. Otherwise, I stick it in a tin until I'm ready to use it, and then split it up and bag it the night before I use it.

As I noted yesterday on another thread, I plan at some point to use ADY instead of IDY in the new dough making method I have been using, but that is mainly to learn something new from the experiment. If my recent experiments have proved anything, I think it is that there is a lot of sugar locked up in the flour that can be released, or new sugars formed as postulated by member November, over a long period of fermentation. In my most recent experiment I increased the amount of yeast by more than twice the amount I normally use with the Lehmann dough formulation and that didn't seem to affect the results from a dough longevity standpoint.

Commercial yeast is aggressive. Refrigeration slows yeast activity; but as we know, it doesn't stop it. So I'm not surprised with minimal impact of additional yeast. I still take precaution. I have used cool water for some time now and don't even proof ADY any longer as mentioned above (I found with varous bread machine books and Pete-zza found with his Zo machine book a long time ago, it's not uncommon for ADY to be recommended with flour without proofing).